Phish.net > Lyrics Index

Want to name a pet something besides Tela? Can't recall which song mentions Aquitana or Elihu? Remember which nine Phish songs mention birds? Now, and once again, you can. Originally published in the second edition of The Phish Companion, extended with input from forum regulars in an earlier (c.2012-2015) version, and now thoroughly rebuilt from the ground up, the Lyrics Index is back!

This is a selective topical index of the lyrics to 252 Phish originals¹ – 26,664 words², indexed in 2,845 references³ (2,344 entered so far - 501 OTW!), organized in 51 topical categories⁴, some more selective than others⁵. The included references follow this logic:

• A single index entry typically refers to multiple forms of the root, such as
  • "party" for "partying" and "parties", or
  • "circle" for "circled" and "circular."
  
  
• Some specific instances of a word are indexed in more than one place, such as
  • "circle" sometimes under Geometry, Directions, and/or Travel, depending on the context; or
  • "banker" under Jobs, but also as "bank", under both Places and Wealth.
  
  
• Different instances of the same word may be indexed differently based on contextual meaning, such as
  • "change" meaning "alter" in Col. Forbin, "variation" in Crowd Control, and "coins" in Fluffhead;
  • "about" referring to an amount (about a ton) or direction (about town), or an element of time (about 10 p.m.) or logic (about Tom); or
  • "with" conveying company (with Forbin), proximity (with the flow), possession (with my fedora on), implementation (with forceps), or time (with her arrival) - though most instances of that preposition don't fit any of our 51 categories³.
  
  
• Summarily, for example, "fly" covers "flying" and "flew", but not "flyers" (Tools) or "flies" (Animals) - and the "to" in "to fly" is not indexed at all, while "flying mockingbird" is indexed three different ways. (Can you find them all?)

The index excludes lyrics based on this set of logic:

1. Songs: We acknowledge 1047 song titles at Phish.net, of which 48 are aliases. Of the 999 unique songs, 630 (63%) are covers. (The index excludes songs performed only by side projects, though does include, for example, Army of One, written for and first performed by Vida Blue but later performed by Phish.) Of the 357 unique originals, 72 (20%) are instrumental, 12 (3%) have lyrics by someone else (such as the Disney samples, or Jon Popper on "Don't Get My Wrong"), and 13 (4%) are excluded for other reasons, leaving 252 songs indexed here.
    
2. Words:In those 252 songs, there are 38,694 total words, 4,757 unique words, and 3,713 roots after pluralization and verb tenses are removed. That includes some version of many words that would be neither interesting nor practical to index, including 20 pronouns (appearing 4,406 times), 17 conjunctions (1,844 times), 11 prepositions (828 times), 8 definite or indefinite articles (3,691 times), 9 forms of "to be" (1,204 times), 19 words (such as Rouge in Baton Rouge) treated in compound with another (57 total), and 21 words (such as 'to' in an infinitive) skipped for other miscellaneous reasons (1,623 total). Those 105 words appear a combined 12,030 times in some form (not including indexed instances, such as of "about" and "with"; see above), 31% of the full 38,694 words of original lyrics.
    
3. References: Removing those 105 words from the 3,713 roots leaves 3,608 identified references, of which 1,970 appear in only one song, 545 appear in two, and 1,093 appear in three or more. Of those, 763 fall below a specified threshold, leaving 2,845 indexed references (including duplicate references) to 40,179 total entries.
    
4. Categories range from t-shirt-friendly basics to arcane grammatical hair-splitting:
   • Basics (330): Animals (85), Characters (79), Colors (21), Names (145)
   • Locations (375): Buildings (31), Home (29), Nature (73), Places (64), Proper Places (36), Travel (99), Vehicles (30), Vehicle Parts (13)
   • Things (401): Clothes (44), Containers (24), Dishes (12), Drugs (12), Food (108), Furniture (26), Materials (88), Tools (77), Toys (10)
   • Measurements (476): Amounts (88), Directions (85), Geometry (54), Groups (30), Numbers (43), Size (22), Time (106), Wealth (48)
   • Arts (200): Art (26), Literature (30), Music (53), Religion (32), Sounds (59)
   • Humanity (428): Body (81), Emotions (84), Events (37), Family (21), Illness (42), Jobs (34), Logic (92), Mind (37)
   • Misc (278): Combat (74), Exclamations (25), Foreign (11), Made-up (24), Vision (95), Water (49)
   • Catchall (142): Misc. Adjectives (46), Misc. Nouns (17), Misc. Verbs (79)
   
   
5. Some categories are exhaustive - such as Animals, Colors, Names, Numbers, and Proper Places - including all potential entries even if only in one song. Some are selective based on frequency - such as Miscellaneous Verbs, indexed only if they appear in at least five songs. The list of categories itself is also not exhaustive (we could, for example, add a category for Education?) - and for some entries in some categories (such as Groups and Amounts, or Mind and Logic), we're definitely splitting hairs.

Only a fraction of Phish lyrics have been officially published, and there are variations in the performance, interpretation, and transcription of others. We thus welcome your feedback, and look forward to future updates.